Paper dictionaries?

[Phil Wareham]

Hi,

 

I'm looking to invest in new dictionaries, as I have new tutor and my motivation to study is on the up. I've searched for threads on dictionaries, and haven't found much. They must be there, but aren't showing up.

 

Could anyone recommend a dictionary for an intermediate (3-4000 word vocabulary, learned over many years in China) that wants a desk reference? I'm thinking of a paper tome I can have at home, that doesn't need to have truly obscure words in it, but should ideally have  a lot of the multisyllabic words and plenty of example sentences. collocations would be nice. I'll go to the Guangzhou bookstore at the weekend, but this could be important and I value other people's opinions. I don't want to walk past a good one.

 

I'm also contemplating investing in the pro version of pleco, but kinda feel like not having at least one big paper dictionary at home is a false economy and just plain weird for an intermediate learner! FYI I mostly used google translate until it was blocked, then switched to the hanping cc-edict because being offline it's very fast. Apart from that, I just ask people things! I don't know if I'm missing out using this sort of basic dictionary.

 

All advice would be welcome.

 

Thanks

 

Phil

[mikelove]

Have you tried our free app? We include a pretty good intermediate dictionary with lots of example sentences in that - Pro bundle gives you a lot more, but even the free version will stack up well against most paper dictionaries.

[anonymoose]

Paper dictionaries are out. I have several, but I haven't touched any of them for years. You can get much more relevant information from the internet these days, so apart from being more convenient, it is just better. My personal suggestion would be don't bother with a paper dictionary.

 

But anyway, you didn't specify what kind of dictionary you want. Chinese monolingual? Chinese-English? English-Chinese? Chinese-Another language?

[li3wei1]

Let me join the line of people not answering your question, but dissing the whole idea instead. Imagine being asked for a recommendation about a manual typewriter. Sure, they're useful if the power goes out but it's still light enough to read, but beyond that? I've used paper dictionaries and I've used electronic ones, and I'm never going back.

[Shelley]

I remember buying my first "proper" Chinese dictionary on a day trip to London in the 1990's and visiting the Chinese bookshops and other shops in Gerrard St known as China Town in London.

 

whata  mistaka that was It weighed a ton and I had to lug it and everything else i bought round the science museum in the afternoon. But i don't regret it, it is my dictionary of last resort it has to be said but i still like owning it and it has its uses.

 

ISBN 7-100-00130-7/H59

Printed in 1988.

Han Ying Ci Dian 汉英词典

 

Its A4 sized and very tome like.

 

Having said all this I have to agree with what has been said about electronic dictionaries and yes Pleco is the only real choice here, not only a dictionary but loads of other helpful things.

It is worth checking it out.

[li3wei1]

Pleco is the only real choice here

 

perhaps if you're talking about portable devices, but the OP is asking about something to stay on his desk at home. Plenty of free online dictionaries that are very easy to use on a desktop computer.

[Shelley]

The OP wanted a paper dictionary to keep on his desk, so I mentioned my dictionary that I keep on my desk.

 

I didn't think he wanted an electronic one for his desktop pc.  Yes Pleco is for portable devices but you can still use it at your desk.

 

And yes there plenty of free dictionaries for desktop PCs, I tried some of them and have always returned to Pleco for ease of use and flexibility.

[Kobo-Daishi]

I'm looking to invest in new dictionaries, as I have new tutor and my motivation to study is on the up.

 

He wrote "dictionaries" in the plural. So, let's not get worked up about it. 

 

If it's a paper dictionary you want, get a copy of the 现代汉语词典.

 

According to a review of 现代汉语规范词典 (Xiàndài Hànyǔ guīfàn cídiǎn) by David Prager Branner and Yuan-Yuan Meng found in The Journal of the American Oriental Society, it's "the de facto standard Chinese dictionary since its first edition in 1978 and domestically even since its widely circulated 1959 trial edition (“shìyìnběn 試印本”)."

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Xiandai-Hanyu-guifan-cidian-review/dp/B005ACW0H4

 

Can't believe the 3 page review costs $10 at Amazon. I got my copy off the Internet somewhere (here?) for free.

 

If you don't want just a Chinese only dictionary, there's a bilingual edition where the definitions are in both Chinese and English.

 

Or you could get the Guifan. No English here though.

 

Of course all these dictionaries are also available as scanned copies online. Some pages are pretty crappy though.

 

Or you could always get the GoldenDict open source program and find the files for the Xiandai. They've the Chinese only text files readily available on the Internet.

 

I finally got around to installing a copy on my Linux machine after finally abandoning Windows XP after the end of support earlier in the year.

 

Kobo.

[imron]

I'm also contemplating investing in the pro version of pleco, but kinda feel like not having at least one big paper dictionary at home is a false economy and just plain weird for an intermediate learner

Take the money you'd spend on a paper dictionary and invest it in Pleco.  At a minimum get the ABC, and I would also recommend the Chinese-Chinese Guifan Dictionary.  Having a big paper dictionary is nice for me from a nostalgia perspective, but I never use it.

[Phil Wareham]

Thanks for the replies, everybody. I was sleeping, and now it's time for work in this timezone. I'll reply later.

[Lu]

I occasionally still use my 现代汉语词典 (Chinese-Chinese-English), but to be honest I usually find more in electronic dictionaries. If after all this discouragement you stilll really want to get a paper one, that would be my recommendation. The ABC Dictionary is also good. If you want something to carry around and don't have or want a smartphone with Pleco, the Little Red Book (Oxford Chinese dictionary) is a good choice.

And now I too shall return to the 21st century, with the seven tabs with various word-finding websites currently open on my computer, and Pleco on my phone.

[Phil Wareham]

Everyone is succeeding in putting me off the paper dictionaries. The idea behind it was that sometimes I can be too fast looking things up and don't take them in. Looking at the radical and counting strokes seems to help my memory. I figured that physically turning pages might provide some additional advantage.

 

I'm trying the pleco demo and love it. The OCR is almost too easy: You can get the pinyin for a word you don't know so fast you don't remember doing it, but that's not something you can really criticise. I'll probably get some add-ons for it; maybe all of them. I like my dictionaries offline, so Pleco and an additional paper dictionary or two are my most likely choices. The latte won't be expensive here.

[li3wei1]

I figured that physically turning pages might provide some additional advantage.

 

You could try using Pleco while wearing mittens.

[Demonic_Duck]

If OCR is "too" quick, you can always just avoid using it. I bought that add-on but have hardly ever used it, writing in the characters by hand is usually almost as quick, and requires you to pay more attention to the form of the character. It also helps that my phone's camera is terrible.

[Lu]

I agree with Demonic Duck. I use the handwriting mode in Pleco, in the (vain) hope that this will help me remember a bit of writing. Producing the characters helps in remembering them a bit better, using OCR is not really good for learning.

[imron]

Looking things up in a paper dictionary will help you remember them, but not as well as the pleco module will. Look up the words, add them to your flashcards, come back later to revise.

[milestones]

I use Pleco mainly but have a paper dictionary I'd recommend: Tuttle Compact Chinese Dictionary (Chinese-English and English-Chinese). By 李冬/Li Dong.  A lot of example sentences (5,000+ total). I find it especially useful for going from English to Chinese.   

[Phil Wareham]

I thought I'd feedback. I went to the (massive) Guangzhou bookstore, but they're undergoing renovations and the relevant books were in short supply. I found a couple of massive tome-like dictionaries and took pictures of them for reference. I also bought myself a little 'basic guide to Chinese grammar by 胡清国 （上海教育出版社）. The dictionaries had 180,000 and 200,000 words, which is considerably less than the pleeco ABC dictionary's 280,000, so even just for breadth, against only one dictionary, they still fall short. The portable ones all looked worse than the free hanping android app (cedict) I used before.

 

The end result was that I bought the professional package of pleco, and have been showing it to everybody, even people that are not remotely interested. It's amazing. Being able to dissect characters into component parts is great for aiding memory, as are the stroke order diagrams. These are invaluable for me in re-learning stroke orders I'd forgotten, that are keeping me from being able to write. I consider it a bargain, and I even take back what I said about the OCR. When I'm studying intensely I'll use it to look up words I don't want to be distracted by and then write pinyin and definitions on my vocab book for later.

[Phil Wareham]

My issue now is deciding whether to ditch anki, or how to integrate pleco and anki. switching back and forth is a pain. I'll search for that. Others have probably gone over that in detail.

[Shelley]

Well IMHO the decision is easy, Keep Pleco, ditch anki. I have never been a fan of anki I don't like the general look of anki and it is not as easy as Pleco to make cards and use them.

 

I have also never trusted ready made decks from anki because I don't think anyone checks and corrects them, and I have found that the information on each card in one deck is different and uses different fonts so whole thing looks messy.

 

Glad you found and like Pleco. welcome to the club